UI Usability

Suggestions Visuals
1

Hi guys, 

I’m a web developer specialized on usability and I thought I’d give some advice to make the game better overall:

 

Top Menu Bar

  • Equipment : place an exclamation mark next to [Equipment] if one of the ships is missing an item in the equipment slot
  • Skills : are fine as it is
  • Contracts : place some notifier in the [Contracts] item whether or not you took 3 contracts and another one is available
  • Warehouse : show how much space left, maybe with a small progress bar
  • Corp : place a number of online members next to the [Corp] menu item
  • optional: place a number next to [ships] showing the amount of ships you have

Squad Menu

The squad menu is in the lower right, where you also get feedback popups about the last battle, earnings, contracts etc. Place the squad window in the upper right to avoid constant overlays.

 

Equipment

Why can I put the same module 4 times into slots, when in combat they all are on the same cooldown?

 

Ship Menu

Allow comparisons between two ships. Like shift+click on a ship to select it and hover over another ship to see both ship’s details.

 

Warehouse

Allow display options by tier and by rarity of items.

 

 

Contracts

  • allow an option to hide/show unavailable contracts
  • when hovering over the Rank of a faction, show us the unlocks we get, instead of having to search through all of the equipment

Chat

  • don’t autojoin “Russian”. Also why are there no “German”, and “French” channels
  • add a “Help” channel
  • when in a squad, its impossible to talk on “Global”. you always talk in “Squad”
  • give us a reply “/r” function to reply to tells. It’s embarrassing that’s not implemented at all
  • when returning from or joining into a battle, you’re current channel tab is always set to “Global” no matter where you talked before

Join Battle

Give us an option to minimize the queue screen and at least browse the other menus (maybe not change anything, but at least view it).

 

Combat

  • give us the option to change the color of the crosshair
  • show friends and squadmates in a different color in the overview

 

Also

  • when you invite someone into your squad, but he is already in one, it breaks yours
  • when you press “FIGHT”, but you didn’t get the “win/loss” message yet, it breaks queuing. Disable the FIGHT button until that message came

 

All in all i think this game is great, just lacks a bit of polish. Keep up the good work.

 

2

Thanks, That’s exqactly what I want to be changed too. I also would look forward for complete customization of the HUD, and yes if I want 4 shield regens on my 4 slots, they should be separate cool downs…otherwise why allow weapons or modules  of multiples to equipped in the first place…LOL

3

Hi guys, 

I’m a web developer specialized on usability and I thought I’d give some advice to make the game better overall:

 

Top Menu Bar

  • Equipment : place an exclamation mark next to [Equipment] if one of the ships is missing an item in the equipment slot

  • Skills : are fine as it is

  • Contracts : place some notifier in the [Contracts] item whether or not you took 3 contracts and another one is available

  • Warehouse : show how much space left, maybe with a small progress bar

  • Corp : place a number of online members next to the [Corp] menu item

  • optional: place a number next to [ships] showing the amount of ships you have

Squad Menu

The squad menu is in the lower right, where you also get feedback popups about the last battle, earnings, contracts etc. Place the squad window in the upper right to avoid constant overlays.

 

Equipment

Why can I put the same module 4 times into slots, when in combat they all are on the same cooldown?

 

Ship Menu

Allow comparisons between two ships. Like shift+click on a ship to select it and hover over another ship to see both ship’s details.

 

Warehouse

Allow display options by tier and by rarity of items.

 

 

Contracts

  • allow an option to hide/show unavailable contracts

  • when hovering over the Rank of a faction, show us the unlocks we get, instead of having to search through all of the equipment

Chat

  • don’t autojoin “Russian”. Also why are there no “German”, and “French” channels

  • add a “Help” channel

  • when in a squad, its impossible to talk on “Global”. you always talk in “Squad”

  • give us a reply “/r” function to reply to tells. It’s embarrassing that’s not implemented at all

  • when returning from or joining into a battle, you’re current channel tab is always set to “Global” no matter where you talked before

Join Battle

Give us an option to minimize the queue screen and at least browse the other menus (maybe not change anything, but at least view it).

 

Combat

  • give us the option to change the color of the crosshair

  • show friends and squadmates in a different color in the overview

 

Also

  • when you invite someone into your squad, but he is already in one, it breaks yours

  • when you press “FIGHT”, but you didn’t get the “win/loss” message yet, it breaks queuing. Disable the FIGHT button until that message came

 

All in all i think this game is great, just lacks a bit of polish. Keep up the good work.

Top Menu Bar:

All of these are unneeded changes that can be quickly checked with only 1 click. Spoiling player’s lazyness TOO much is overdoing it. Also would look fugly design-wise

 

Squad Menu:

Having the Squad Menu in the lower right corner is also a design thing as this is where normally your attention is drawn to automatically. Anywhere else it would look out of place/create an uneasy feeling (especially the top since the eyes normally always try to rest as low as possible while still having everything in their view. Since the victory messages popping up isn’t all that disturbing also an unneeded change.

 

Equipment:

You have a point there

 

Ship Menu:

You have a point there

 

Warehouse:

You have a point there

 

Contracts:

You have a point there

 

Chat:

don’t autojoin “Russian”. Also why are there no “German”, and “French” channels

You don’t autojoin russian. You autojoin global. Something’s wierd going on in your game. As for German and French, that’s because the game is of russian origin and the playerbase is currently rather small not warranting a seperate german or french chat. As I usually tend to say: If you can’t speak english, don’t play english games or learn the language while playing. Don’t try to isolate yourself.

 

 

add a “Help” channel

The staff/amount of english GM’s isn’t big enough for a help channel and all the questions that are ever asked in global could be answered by taking ONE look at the FAQ. No need to bother people with stupid questions over and over again.

 

 

when in a squad, its impossible to talk on “Global”. you always talk in “Squad”

I’m not sure, do you WANT to be forced to talk in squad or do you think that’s what the game does right now? In case 1. No thanks, I prefer being able to talk to my entire team as well, in case 2. once again there’s something wrong with your game.

 

 

give us a reply “/r” function to reply to tells. It’s embarrassing that’s not implemented at all

it’s also completely unecessary and once again only a way to indulge complete lazyness.

 

 

when returning from or joining into a battle, you’re current channel tab is always set to “Global” no matter where you talked before

I agree that after returning from battle I don’t want to talk or even see global. As for when joining the battle, that’s good since global in a match is your teamchat

 

Join Battle:

you have a point there.

 

Combat:

  1. you have a point there

  2. if you forget the name of your friends or their conveniently placed clan-tags I don’t there’s much helping you :slight_smile:

 

 

when you invite someone into your squad, but he is already in one, it breaks yours

never happened to me

 

 

when you press “FIGHT”, but you didn’t get the “win/loss” message yet, it breaks queuing. Disable the FIGHT button until that message came

never happened to me

 

 

All in all some good points and some points that show a userintelligence expectancy of 0 and/or a lazyness level of 100 (out of 100).

Also please keep in mind that I use a lot of sarcasm, irony and cynisism. In no way do I mean to offend you :slight_smile:

4

Good usability has nothing to do with laziness.

 

 

Top Menu Bar:

All of these are unneeded changes that can be quickly checked with only 1 click. Spoiling player’s lazyness TOO much is overdoing it. Also would look fugly design-wise

 

I am not too lazy to click on contracts to check them, it’s rather stupid & annoying to repeat this step after every battle. Also its one click + scrolling up & down the list. That takes time and time is a resource which can & should always be saved.

 

As to your other “kind” words:

  • the people in the internet ARE lazy & stupid

  • they will always ask BEFORE looking up a wiki

  • don’t tell me to learn english, this is obviously the language I post in. Just the Global channel is currently being utterly messy and full of german, french and whatnot languages.

  • the help channel can be filled by helpful people and not GMs

  • when you say there’s something wrong with my game, its also wrong with everyone of my corporation’s game. Not sure if trolling.

5

 

Hi guys, 

I’m a web developer specialized on usability and I thought I’d give some advice to make the game better overall:

 

Top Menu Bar

  • Equipment : place an exclamation mark next to [Equipment] if one of the ships is missing an item in the equipment slot
  • Skills : are fine as it is
  • Contracts : place some notifier in the [Contracts] item whether or not you took 3 contracts and another one is available
  • Warehouse : show how much space left, maybe with a small progress bar
  • Corp : place a number of online members next to the [Corp] menu item
  • optional: place a number next to [ships] showing the amount of ships you have

These would be completely unneeded changes as they are not very vital information, and would create too much noise/clutter.

 

Squad Menu

The squad menu is in the lower right, where you also get feedback popups about the last battle, earnings, contracts etc. Place the squad window in the upper right to avoid constant overlays.

Just make it movable and possible to resize, hide or pin in any spot - simple as that.  Also the border could be just a thin line to make it even smaller.

 

Equipment

Why can I put the same module 4 times into slots, when in combat they all are on the same cooldown?

Kind of agree - those modules with stacking effect should have it stated in description, not being able to equip 2 modules would be a nice touch - but not a high priority change imho.

 

 

 

Ship Menu

Allow comparisons between two ships. Like shift+click on a ship to select it and hover over another ship to see both ship’s details.

 

Warehouse

Allow display options by tier and by rarity of items.

 

 

Contracts

  • allow an option to hide/show unavailable contracts
  • when hovering over the Rank of a faction, show us the unlocks we get, instead of having to search through all of the equipment

 

Agree. These are very good ideas. Also there should be only Warehouse with Shop and different other filtering options (like rank, type of ship, quality, faction etc) with possibility to equip those items to your ship. I’m not sure why there are two windows having basically same use - Warehouse and Equipment…

 

 

 

Chat

  • don’t autojoin “Russian”. Also why are there no “German”, and “French” channels
  • add a “Help” channel
  • when in a squad, its impossible to talk on “Global”. you always talk in “Squad”
  • give us a reply “/r” function to reply to tells. It’s embarrassing that’s not implemented at all
  • when returning from or joining into a battle, you’re current channel tab is always set to “Global” no matter where you talked before

Pretty much what Hammas said above. I don’t autojoin Russian chat but Global. Also Chat is “coming soon” and I expect it will have same sort of usability as in War Thunder chat. Which is neat.

It’s possible to chat in both Squad and Global chats (as in your team chat) and also in Global you know form the garage - there is an option in settings allowing that.

 

 

Join Battle

Give us an option to minimize the queue screen and at least browse the other menus (maybe not change anything, but at least view it).

 

You are able to chat during queue and I think that’s enough - queue times are short enough anyway (mine are almost always under 1 min). Change not needed imho.

 

 

 

 

Combat

  • give us the option to change the color of the crosshair
  • show friends and squadmates in a different color in the overview

 

Agree. There is plenty ways I would like to alter the combat HUD - like enemy/friendly icons or colour of locked enemy hitbox (on most of the maps backgrounds are red - red icons on red background… odd design choice, honestly). More possibilities to customize HUD = better game experience. Colours, filters, the way icons are displayed. I don’t mind having to use chat commands to do that, really - but I would like more options similar to cl_scrollCombatText already in the game.

 

 

 

Also

  • when you invite someone into your squad, but he is already in one, it breaks yours
  • when you press “FIGHT”, but you didn’t get the “win/loss” message yet, it breaks queuing. Disable the FIGHT button until that message came
     

All in all i think this game is great, just lacks a bit of polish. Keep up the good work.

 

Haven’t noticed those issues myself. Might be your game or some random bug maybe?

Overall nice post and few good ideas. You must keep in mind, though, that game UI is a different beast than website layout.

EDIT:

As to your other “kind” words:

  • the people in the internet ARE lazy & stupid

  • they will always ask BEFORE looking up a wiki

 

It’s a sad sad world you are living in, sir.

Also - even if it’s only partially true - there’s no need to feed their laziness and stupidity even more with sacrificing visual clarity and consistence. They have Zynga for that.

6

Would be nice if the storage would be set up like a grid instead of the current system.

7

Would be nice if the storage would be set up like a grid instead of the current system.

 

You mean Warehouse? You can switch between grid and list if that’s what you mean.

8

You can? Jeez they seriously need to make a tutorial of this.

9

Good usability has nothing to do with laziness.

 

 

 

I am not too lazy to click on contracts to check them, it’s rather stupid & annoying to repeat this step after every battle. Also its one click + scrolling up & down the list. That takes time and time is a resource which can & should always be saved.

 

As to your other “kind” words:

  • the people in the internet ARE lazy & stupid

  • they will always ask BEFORE looking up a wiki

  • don’t tell me to learn english, this is obviously the language I post in. Just the Global channel is currently being utterly messy and full of german, french and whatnot languages.

  • the help channel can be filled by helpful people and not GMs

  • when you say there’s something wrong with my game, its also wrong with everyone of my corporation’s game. Not sure if trolling.

I’m sorry if I offended you Kyoss, I tried to make it clear that I was writing half-jokingly but meh internet does have problems regarding that.

 

  • Yes that’s true but there’s a difference of approach and activity when viewing a homepage(which is your are of expertise) and a game.

  • Ye I know. Just saying that you don’t have to force GM’s to answer the same question every 10 seconds

  • I didn’t mean you in person. It’s just that in games I tend to see a lot of people especially the french, german and russian speaking ones (which is obvious by the fact that those 4 are world languages) who try to isolate themselves in a space dedicated to their own language without trying to learn the universally used language. I myself am german (and speak french, russian and english which is why I know this type of attidude on the part of non-native speakers exists.).

  • In order to avoid trolls or the kind of behaviour you see in global, these people would have to be handpicked by GM’s. Also no need to annoy those guys.

  • Mh that’s wierd. I can only say that the Steam version I am currently using seems to be different in some functions. Since Steam tends to modify/optimize games a little that could be the deciding factor?

 

Once again sorry if you felt I was insulting you.

10

I love love the contracts told you if you don’t have 3 before queing.

11
  • Yes that’s true but there’s a difference of approach and activity when viewing a homepage(which is your are of expertise) and a game.

 

i get what you mean, but in the hangar, its about displaying information. Of course i tend to minimize clicks, since clicks are used bandwith, 

which does not really matter here - but wasted time is wasted time.

 

 

Once again sorry if you felt I was insulting you.

 

It is kinda hard to read sarcasm and irony :wink: no offense taken

12

You can? Jeez they seriously need to make a tutorial of this.

 

True. It would be handy to actually have Encyclopedia of sorts, similar to War Thunder - explaining all aspects of the game and maybe with section about lore, too - for those who like to read. :slight_smile:

 

5pkf4l.jpg

 

As I uploaded that picture anyway, I thought I might add my wishlist to OPs ideas.

 

  1. More filtering options - quality, tier,  role , sub-faction, type of ship - those I think would be most important.

 

  1. As it is now I think this button only sort them according to Tier - price and quality sorting would be useful.

 

  1. Most important thing I can think of - let me equip/unequip items from ships I have in hangar from Warehouse screen - RMB popup menu with Sell, Equip, Unequip, Compare etc

    Also: in list view mode description what role each module fits would be pretty useful I think.

 

Talking about hangar - I’m pretty sure RMB pop up menu with options  Remove, Move to slot 1,  Move to slot 2, Move to slot 3 would improve usability and would reduce amount of questions about selling ships tremendously. Besides - I have no clue whatsoever why someone decided that I have to open ships tech tree to remove them from hangar or swap slots. That doesn’t make sense.

 

These are my “most wanted” UI usability changes (for now).

 

EDIT:

 

One more very important thing: Module says “On another ship”. But never tells what ship.

Even when you decide to unequip it and put it on your current ship prompt "Are you sure… " don’t tell what ship you remove stuff from.

I ended up today unequiping item from one ship (thinking that it’s on one not in the hangar) then noticed I moved it from ship in my rooster, and did it again… Incredibly annoying and confusing. 

13

One more very important thing: Module says “On another ship”. But never tells what ship.

Even when you decide to unequip it and put it on your current ship prompt "Are you sure… " don’t tell what ship you remove stuff from.

I ended up today unequiping item from one ship (thinking that it’s on one not in the hangar) then noticed I moved it from ship in my rooster, and did it again… Incredibly annoying and confusing. 

There should be a little ship icon depicting what it is equipped too, but honestly, its kinda hard to see and its hard to tell what ship of the faction it belongs too like from Legion to Warden ships.

14

I think the game could benefit a lot from information being a bit more accessible. The changes you list sound perfectly justified and reasonable. However I think this sort of polishing should take a low priority. I want to see a bit more variety in the game, map wise and mode wise, well before I’m going to start complaining about the UI.

15

There should be a little ship icon depicting what it is equipped too, but honestly, its kinda hard to see and its hard to tell what ship of the faction it belongs too like from Legion to Warden ships.

 

Oooh the outline on the icon! Yeah after you said that I have noticed it! Damn! It’s  indeed it’s hard to see. I was looking at that icon for good minute before I saw it.

I don’t mind such visual way of showing it - the problem is - all interceptors and all fighters and all frigates of certain empire/faction look identical when you look at their outline, no?

 

My point stays as it was, then - but we are even with the “player2player help” part, Draco!  

:salute:

 

 

~~

 

I think the game could benefit a lot from information being a bit more accessible. The changes you list sound perfectly justified and reasonable. However I think this sort of polishing should take a low priority. I want to see a bit more variety in the game, map wise and mode wise, well before I’m going to start complaining about the UI.

 

Well, honestly - UI and its accessibility in any software is way more important than other content - as it’s the UI user is interacting with first when entering the game.

If user is lost with the UI he can’t access and enjoy the content in comfortable way - which puts him off and he loose interest.

 

I know many games which failed to make good 1st impression because of the way the UI was made. :coughSkyrimcough: